


Back To The Room (Where It All Began)

by beware_phangirl (dantiloquent)



Series: One Shots [4]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Cats, I climbed through the wrong window, M/M, also flirting, he has cats, kind of. sorry i'm trash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-10
Updated: 2015-02-10
Packaged: 2018-03-11 13:20:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3328139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dantiloquent/pseuds/beware_phangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“i accidentally broke into your house/apartment because my friend lives next door to you and i was in the area, drunk, and i thought i was climbing into the right window and falling asleep on the right couch (and i did wonder when my friend got two cats but i didn’t question it) so now i’m hungover and shirtless in your living room so um hi howya doin” au</p>
            </blockquote>





	Back To The Room (Where It All Began)

**Author's Note:**

> the one where hannah goes back to plagiarizing lyrics and using brackets in the title.  
> so basically, now that tkyneadct is finished, I'll be posting one shots on here. I have posted some of my past one shots, but only the ones I'm pleased with so that may apply to this, too. Either way, here, have this, and expect more (hopefully!).

Dan swears the time his alarm is going off at is getting earlier each morning. He’s trying out a ‘controlled’ sleep schedule, which means him waking up at fucking nine am when he’s gotten six hours sleep (and he does _try_ to go to bed at eleven, he does). It’s a Saturday and the second hit of the snooze button, so he’s done quite well, he thinks - if he hadn’t forgotten to close his blinds, it may have been worse. With sunlight just reaching his room and a cat pawing at his face, Dan stands grudgingly, and he pretends it isn't because his pet makes it feel obligatory to do so. He wobbles on his feet for a second before becoming stable, rubbing his eyes.

“Alright, alright, Rue, I’m coming,” Dan grumbles, scooping up the cat curling round his leg and pressing her to his chest as he makes his blind way to the kitchen. He’s forgotten to put socks on again, so the slats of wood are cold underneath his toes. 

“You as well?” he smiles as another cat appears round a door, slipping through the gap and ruffling up her dark fur in the process. Entering the kitchen, he switches on the lights, bursts of sharp gold printed on his cornea before he blinks them away. He opens several cupboards before fumbling with the cat food, pouring it into two chipped, ceramic bowls and placing it onto the counter. The cats have climbed up, ready; their tails are high and curled and brushing the glass cupboard doors. Within seconds, they’re snapping up the food, and Dan watches with a sloppy grin. He studies the concaves of the cheap china and tugs at his shirt, as if it'll stop the chilling draft slipping beneath the fabric.

“What am I going to do with you?” he mutters, rubbing Rue’s neck. Her fur is soft under the pads of his fingers, strings of coal that glow in the kitchen light. Rue carries on eating, purring listlessly. Dan sighs. Looks round the empty kitchen with the one chair, listens to the silence of his flat.

“Yeah.”

Dan heads back to his bedroom just because he can, Rue going off in another direction and Bee languidly keeping to his side. He puts on two odd socks, the fabric bunching round his ankle; his fingers find the uneven string of his blinds before he remembers they're already open. His eyes scan the room, as if an opportunity will present itself — of course it doesn't, and Dan's left following the paw prints on the carpet to the living room. 

He stops short at the threshold, like a paused tape or faulty record. His fingers are still wisps of smoke round the handle, eyes round and frozen as the room starts to spin. Nothing makes sense. Nothing makes sense and the routine he's followed like he's a repeated story is stagnated because there's a fucking _stranger_ reclining on his couch. Dan gawks at them, fingers tightening around the harsh metal of the handle. A rise and hitched fall of the guy's chest reminds him to do the same, and he edges round the room. 

The stranger's topless, wearing too-short jeans and a dark hair cut that conceals the pale skin down until the long eye lashes. He lies in an almost fetal position, knees tucked to his chest and face looking like supple china in the morning light. Dan spots a bag discarded on the floor, and he picks it up tentatively before shutting the window. He wants to laugh, almost; it's too normal, considering the figure curled on the couch, and a part of him sees snatches of mud and if he was Sherlock he'd say that's how he got in. He's not, so Dan keeps the thought to himself. It's not logical to just disappear whilst the guy's still sleeping, he decides, and the bag weighs down on his hands, heavy with the crunch of a plastic water bottle and the unknown. A cautious tug at the zip unveils an ID; the guy's name is _Philip Lester_ , he's old enough to get drunk and get away with it, and he portrays cosmic blue in shatters of iris and a smirk that slips into his sleep. Upon this discovery Dan lifts his gaze again, eyes flitting up and down as Phil dozes. Phil’s figure is soft with sleep, one arm slung over the cushion of the sofa and dangling three-quarters of the way to the floor. There’s the remnants of a tattoo on his wrist in the form of a date, the numbers 31/10/09 in small capitals. Phil’s doodled across it, attempts to eradicate it in the form of childhood stars in wobbly arrangements seeping into the cracks in his skin; he’s drawn wondering lines between them to form concocted constellations. 

Maybe it's because the window is open, maybe it's his urge to do something, but the room is too cold for someone without a shirt. So Dan leaves the room again, knocking his calf on the table in the hall — he doesn't even know why he has that — and entering his bedroom in dubious strides. He grabs a blanket from his bed, sending a half-read book toppling to the floor, before doubling back and choosing a clean shirt from a pile. He holds it up by the collar, concluding that it could possibly fit. Dan doesn’t stop to think deeply about how _what the fuck there’s a stranger in my lounge and I’m getting him clothes_ as he makes his way back.

“Um, hi.” There’s a voice and it comes from Phil’s mouth and he was asleep two seconds ago, goddammit. Dan’s eyes squint and his head furrows; something piles up in his throat and his grip tightens on the blanket. “Look what the cat dragged in,” Phil grins. When he smiles, lips which trace the red cards of a deck twirl upwards to his eyes. His fingers are playing around Rue’s ears, and he continues to pet her as he looks up, “This is the one I’ve met.” Dan’s hit with a stare sincere and ten times clearer than the grains of an ID. Bee draws near to Phil, and his fingers stretch out to greet her - but she promptly scurries away, but all Phil does is chuckle. Dan’s watching the whole silently stunned, and his gaze meets Phil’s again when he laughs and _is this what happens when strangers end up on your couch_. “And this is the one I haven’t.” Dan picks Bee up when she arrives at his heel, fingers weaving circles on her scruff.

“This is Bee,” he says. It’s the first thing he’s said, he realises, and Phil raises an amused eyebrow.  
“You named your cat ‘Bee’?”

“Yeah,” Dan starts to smile and he nods to the cat still hovering around Phil - she’s climbed up to his chest, now, “That one’s Rue.”

Phil’s brow is furrowed for another few moments before he grins.

“That’s a jewel-ly good name, then.”

“I’ll kick you out.” 

Phil laughs again, propping himself up on the cushions.

“So now I know the names of your pets, may I know what yours is?”

“Dan,” Dan replies, crouching down and letting go of his cat, “and you?”

“Phil. And, I feel obliged to say that I’m not going to kill you.”

“Well, that makes it alright then,” Dan says, but he’s sitting down on the armchair and chucking Phil the blanket.

“Thanks,” he takes it and throws it lazily over himself, “I guess I’ve got a lot of explaining to do, huh?” Dan nods but doesn’t speak, so Phil’s left to begin.

-

“Hang on, hang on,” Dan interrupts, “You did what?”

“Climbed through the window,” Phil replies simply, “And yeah, I did wonder when PJ got a cat, and I didn’t think this was his particular decor choice,” his face crinkles up as he looks round at the chairs and tables and objects, stuck together in patches of a quilt. “But I was drunk and hey, easy mistake to make, right?”

“Hardly,” Dan says. The tale has pulled a smile into his lips, “You’re a bit of a twat, if I’m honest.”

“So I’ve been told,” Phil smirks. His eyes twinkle and burn into retinas, and Dan stares, caught, and it’s like the colours of his iris start to churn, and the air is acrid in his nose like Sauterne - though that may well be the pockets of alcohol aroma latched onto Phil.

“Do you study it?” Phil asks suddenly, nodding to the pile of psychology books Dan’s left on the rickety coffee table. The titles blur in his vision.

“Nah. Just a bit of light reading,” Dan dismisses.

“Light?” Phil’s eyebrows raise, “You call that light?”

“Not normally, no,” Dan muses. His eyes find their way back to Phil.

 

“Shut up,” he smiles. Dan does so, and they both take each other in shamelessly, a tale of clubbing and mistakes drifting between them as they drink in freckles and clothes and constellations.

“Well, I suppose I had better scarper,” Phil announces, says it like it’s mild and everyday business and Dan hopes it isn’t. He wants him to stay, he thinks. He’s not sure and Phil is a stranger and he doesn’t even know his surname. He makes to stand, before groaning and rubbing his temples. “I may need a paracetamol before I go, though.”

“You could. Or you could stay here, and rest the hangover off?”

“Really? That would be okay?”

“I’m offering you a day of endless coffee and TV, versus getting the bus with a headache.”

“You drive a hard bargain.”

“I know I do,” Dan grins just as hard back, just as stupidly. And if he weren’t still sleep-ridden he’d be wondering what they’d call this.

“It’s too early in the morning to flirt, I’m sorry,” Phil says, “Give me six hours and I’ll have a line which’ll have you infatuated with me.”

“Agreed,” Dan laughs. Phil does too; Phil’s laugh, he thinks, is flowery and pink like Dan’s cheeks right now. “Are you going to be staying that long, though?” he teases.

“You can’t kick me out yet,” Phil comments, “I haven’t had that coffee you promised.”

“Very true,” Dan nods, rising to his feet. “What would you like?”

“Surprise me,” says Phil. Dan is pretty sure that every other thing Phil’s said has been accompanied by that incendiary smile. Dan rolls his eyes with a scoff, starting to exit the room.

“Is it too early, though, to ask for an Internet password? And a phone number?”

Dan’s left to hear his own laugh bounce off the walls and wonder if he can blame the steam of the kettle for his red ears.


End file.
